August von Mackensen stages a coup in 1933. What happens next?

[LordKiran]

Hitler is elected chancellor in January of 1933. August von Mackensen is a celebrated war hero from the great war and a popular public figure with ties to high places. In the wake of Hitler's election, the Reichstag fire occurs prompting Hitler to take on emergency powers. Suppose von Mackensen finds this intolerable and decides to do the unthinkable, and somehow manages to successfully stage a coup, bringing back the German empire and reinstalling Kaiser Wilhelm the second. What happens next?

 

[steve_bank]

The fire is believed to have been set by Hitler's orders, and blamed on communists.

Look at Night Of The Long Knives. He worked to a plan.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Hitler is elected chancellor in January of 1933. August von Mackensen is a celebrated war hero from the great war and a popular public figure with ties to high places. In the wake of Hitler's election, the Reichstag fire occurs prompting Hitler to take on emergency powers. Suppose von Mackensen finds this intolerable and decides to do the unthinkable, and somehow manages to successfully stage a coup, bringing back the German empire and reinstalling Kaiser Wilhelm the second. What happens next?

Your potential backers say the story doesn't have enough sex.

 

[Tigers!]

If Hindenburg had supported the coup who knows how it might have panned out?

 

[bilby]

If Hindenburg had supported the coup who knows how it might have panned out?

Hindenburg would have gone down in flames.

















Too soon?

 

[Tigers!]

If Hindenburg had supported the coup who knows how it might have panned out?

Hindenburg would have gone down in flames.

















Too soon?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Hindenburg would have gone down in flames.

So there actually is hot sex in this story.

 

[SLD]

There were several such points in the history of Nazi Germany. One was when Chamberlain agreed to go to Munich. Apparently several German generals were ready to stop Hitler and the order was ready to go out before Chamberlain said he’d meet with Hitler. The orders were then burnt and the High command never again challenged Hitler.

As to what would have happened had Hitler been stopped, well who knows? One wonders if the long term outcome would be worse in some aspects. Germany might have stayed authoritarian, just not gone to war, and not engaged in the holocaust. Much of the rest of Europe also might today be authoritarian as a result. Italy would be fascist still today.

It took a Second World War to truly defeat fascism. It took the war to expose it for what it was.

Interestingly enough the Japanese American war would still have been waged, but only in a one front way. Would that have been sufficiently different therefore to avoid the use of atomic weapons? Would we even be developing weapons without the warning about Hitler's development of such?

SLD

 

[bilby]

There were several such points in the history of Nazi Germany. One was when Chamberlain agreed to go to Munich. Apparently several German generals were ready to stop Hitler and the order was ready to go out before Chamberlain said he’d meet with Hitler. The orders were then burnt and the High command never again challenged Hitler.

As to what would have happened had Hitler been stopped, well who knows? One wonders if the long term outcome would be worse in some aspects. Germany might have stayed authoritarian, just not gone to war, and not engaged in the holocaust. Much of the rest of Europe also might today be authoritarian as a result. Italy would be fascist still today.

It took a Second World War to truly defeat fascism. It took the war to expose it for what it was.

Interestingly enough the Japanese American war would still have been waged, but only in a one front way. Would that have been sufficiently different therefore to avoid the use of atomic weapons? Would we even be developing weapons without the warning about Hitler's development of such?

SLD

Given that many of the key physicists in the Manhattan project were refugees from the Nazis, it seems unlikely that America would have been the first to develop a nuclear weapon in that scenario.

Without the war, the British Empire would likely have been the world's first superpower; The British nuclear bomb project, Tube Alloys, was rolled into the Manhattan project to take it out of range of German bombing, but if that had been unnecessary, and with the resources of the empire behind them, the British could well have been the world's first nuclear power.

 

[Sarpedon]

I do not think Japan would have attacked the USA alone. With no war in Europe, they would have realized that the British would probably have entered the war to protect their asian colonies. With no Axis pact, it would have been exceedingly foolish for the Japanese to widen their war. Now, it can be said that even with the pact, what they did was exceedingly foolish, but it didn't look that way at the end of 1941.

 

[bilby]

I do not think Japan would have attacked the USA alone. With no war in Europe, they would have realized that the British would probably have entered the war to protect their asian colonies. With no Axis pact, it would have been exceedingly foolish for the Japanese to widen their war. Now, it can be said that even with the pact, what they did was exceedingly foolish, but it didn't look that way at the end of 1941.

So what would have happened in South East Asia?

Japan was trying to carve out a colonial niche, in China, Manchuria and elsewhere; the extant colonial powers wanted none of that. Japan needed raw materials from the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, British Malaya, and the American Philippines. The Dutch, French, British and Americans didn't want to provide them. How would that have played out? Japan were clearly prepared for (and engaged in) war in China long before war broke out in Europe, and their continued expansion in the region implied eventual war with those four powers.

Perhaps they might have attacked the British in Singapore, and/or Hong Kong, rather than the Americans in Hawaii; but they still would have expected to have to fight the US at some point.

Bear in mind that they genuinely thought that a successful strike on the US Pacific Fleet would cause the Americans to relinquish any claim on power in the western Pacific. It seems unlikely to me that the situation in Europe played a huge part in their strategic planning, and even less likely that they would have held off from attacking the USA just because of a few loosely allied European nations might come to her defence.

After all, the US didn't commit any military assistance to Britain in the more than two years of war before Pearl Harbor. Why would the (neutral) British be expected to send the Royal Navy to help the Americans with their Pacific squabble, if the roles were reversed? Chamberlain was desperate to avoid war in Europe. He would have been even less keen on a major war in the Far East.

 

[Sarpedon]

Nothing too concrete, besides the British are notorious for preemptively knocking down rivals. Intervening in a war that has little to do with them in order to hinder a potential rival is a very british thing to do. Also, the British seemed a lot more sensitive to their own colonies than to their allies. Japan was a threat in a way the USA was not. Besides, the USA didn't have much in asia beyond the Philipines and Guam. Once the Japanese had taken those, what would they take next?

Also, the British were arguably in a better position to fight Japan than Germany. Since Japan didn't threaten Britain directly, and Britain would only be interested in knocking Japan back from its territories, I don't expect that Britain would be as fearful as with Germany, especially as they'd likely have the cooperation of both the, at this time intact, French and Dutch Empires.

 

[bilby]

Nothing too concrete, besides the British are notorious for preemptively knocking down rivals. Intervening in a war that has little to do with them in order to hinder a potential rival is a very british thing to do. Also, the British seemed a lot more sensitive to their own colonies than to their allies.

Sure, but that's my point. The British would send the Royal navy to defend Singapore, Malaya, Hong Kong or any other colony; They MIGHT take advantage of an opportunity to place additional areas under their protection (for example by annexing further territory in China, or by offering assistance to the French or Dutch in exchange for parts of their colonies). But to rush to the defense of the Americans would be out of character. And the Japanese would know this. The Japanese would, I believe, see little likelihood that an attack on Pearl Harbor would change the attitude of Britain towards Japan, which they knew would become a state of war as soon as the Japanese started invading British colonies in the region. The British were already very unhappy about the Japanese presence in China - not so much because they cared about the Chinese, but because they wanted China for themselves, and were not happy to share (particularly not with some upstart power that didn't even have the good grace to be ruled by white Christians).

Japan was a threat in a way the USA was not. Besides, the USA didn't have much in asia beyond the Philipines and Guam. Once the Japanese had taken those, what would they take next?

Also, the British were arguably in a better position to fight Japan than Germany. Since Japan didn't threaten Britain directly, and Britain would only be interested in knocking Japan back from its territories, I don't expect that Britain would be as fearful as with Germany, especially as they'd likely have the cooperation of both the, at this time intact, French and Dutch Empires.

I don't disagree; But I do doubt that the same Japanese Empire that took the decision to bomb Pearl Harbor in the factual timeline would find a compelling reason not to do the same, in a counterfactual in which Britain, France and the Netherlands were more actively defending their Far Eastern colonies.

The only reason I find plausible why Japan would not attack Pearl Harbor in such a scenario would be if military action by the European colonial powers had left them incapable of such an attack (eg by sinking the aircraft carriers needed for it). Aside from any such material losses, Japan still has much the same motivation, and would surely follow the same line of reasoning (flawed though we now know it to be) that they did in our timeline. The US Pacific Fleet is a huge threat to Japan's ambitions in either scenario. Why would they decide NOT to try to destroy that threat?

 

[Sarpedon]

Not necessarily disagreeing, but, I note that in our timeline, Japan waited to attack the USA until Germany had already immobilized the British Fleet, (apparently) destroyed the USSR, and captured the home territories of France and the Netherlands. Japan in our timeline probably felt that there was only one real threat left, instead of four.

 

[bilby]

Not necessarily disagreeing, but, I note that in our timeline, Japan waited to attack the USA until Germany had already immobilized the British Fleet, (apparently) destroyed the USSR, and captured the home territories of France and the Netherlands. Japan in our timeline probably felt that there was only one real threat left, instead of four.

Maybe. But Japan started their expansionary war two full years before war broke out in Europe, and as far as I can see, the plan all along included conflict with the European colonial powers, and the decapitation of the US Pacific Fleet; The war in Europe helped, but I don't see that it significantly changed the strategy of the Japanese, which was always to push the other powers out of what they saw as 'their' region, and establish a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere". America had the least direct involvement in the region of the western colonial powers. The Japanese assessed that US Isolationism would render the Americans vulnerable. The fact that the US Pacific Fleet were at Pearl, in a peacetime posture that left them open to surprise (rather than being dispersed at sea, or actively patrolling in the vicinity of Guam and the Philippines) suggests that at least that part of their assessment was correct. By decapitating that threat, they believed that they would then be free to concentrate on their land-grab, most of which they hoped to complete before European navies could bring significant force to the region.

The plan owed much to the Schlieffen Plan (or at least, to the way that plan was understood by military strategists of the 1930s) - with a swift and decisive blow, knock out the force that can mobilize quickly; then re-position your forces to oppose the slower enemy on the opposite flank.

Of course, we know now that the attack on Pearl was a gross miscalculation; But my feeling is that if the UK, French and Dutch navies had been a greater threat to Japanese ambitions (due to the absence of a European war), then that would have made the strike to knock out the US Navy all the more imperative in the eyes of the Japanese Imperial strategists.